VICTORIA — The B.C. legislature was in session for a mere 10 minutes Monday afternoon when the MLAs began making provincial parliamentary history.

Mike de Jong, House leader for the governing B.C. Liberals, surprised the Opposition parties with a bill that would have granted the B.C. Greens the full-party status they had been seeking since the election.

“I move the bill be introduced and read a first time now,” said de Jong, invoking parliamentary procedure both ancient and routine.

First reading simply puts the bill on the order paper for future scrutiny and debate. Almost every bill clears first reading, government-initiated measures most of all. But not Monday.

“Division,” called NDP House leader Mike Farnworth, ensuring there would be a recorded vote on de Jong’s motion and signalling that something unprecedented was about to happen.

As the division bells rang for the mandated five-minute interval before the vote, the Liberal Mike suggested the House might recess “long enough to ensure that the bill can be distributed to members before the vote.”

After all, didn’t the Opposition want to know what it was voting on before it voted?

Liberal House Leader Mike de Jong speaks during a news conference from his office at the B.C. legislature in Victoria on Monday.CHAD HIPOLITO /
CP

“No,” replied the NDP Mike, summing up the Opposition state of mind with a single word. Fed-up with delays, evasions and political stunts, Farnworth and colleagues were focused on the confidence vote, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, that is expected to deliver the Liberals into Opposition and the NDP into government.

The three Green MLAs were also surprised by the Liberal move to reduce the threshold for party status from the current four to three.

“A rather expensive bill for us to not vote for,” as party Leader Andrew Weaver put it, since the change would have provided premium pay for him as party leader and the other two MLAs as House leader and whip.

Still the Greens were no less resolved than the New Democrats to get on with bringing down the government. “Our caucus will not debate legislation until the confidence of the House has been tested,” said Weaver via news release.

So when Speaker Steve Thomson called the vote after the obligatory five minutes of bell-ringing, the Greens and NDP combined to defeat the Liberals 44 to 42.

Rare enough for there to be a recorded vote on first reading, rarer still for a government to be defeated. Indeed, a search of the journals of the House going back to colonial days turned up no previous instance where a government bill had been subjected to such indignation on first reading.

Five minutes later it happened again, this time on a Liberal bill to reform campaign finance along the lines proposed by the Greens and NDP before the election.

Where the previous bill ran for two paragraphs, this one extended over 30 pages and dozens of sections. The contents earned no more respect from the New Democrats. Most of them barely thumbed beyond the title page before declaring their intentions.

Again the motion for first reading, again division was called, again the government came out on the losing side by the same 44 to 42 margin.

Normally, when a bill passes first reading, copies are distributed to the news media and the text is posted on the legislature website. But these two legislative proposals had been utterly negated and cast out, retaining no parliamentary status whatsoever.

Still, after a procedural delay, a handful of copies of the non-bills were delivered to the press gallery. They will likely be hoarded along with copies of the cabinet lineup and the current seating plan for government and Opposition, as relics of the last days of the B.C. Liberal administration.

It fell to Weaver to signal that Monday’s precedent-making train of events may not be the last as things unfold through the summer and into the fall.

The B.C. Liberals thought the Green leader might be tempted to support their campaign finance bill because he’d indicated as much the week before.

“Absolutely we would — that would be very exciting,” he told Rob Shaw of Postmedia News, when asked if he could back Liberal intentions to ban union and corporate contributions outright and cap individual donations.

Weaver further maintained that the Greens would support the bill, come what may in terms of the timing of the confidence vote.

Speaker Steve Thomson arrives before the start of the debate in Victoria on Monday.CHAD HIPOLITO /
CP

“Only (the government) controls the timing of the confidence vote,” he continued. “We have always argued for good policy … It would be weirder if we voted against everything we thought we stood for.”

Instead, it would appear that for Weaver last week’s weird is this week’s policy. As of Monday, he was acknowledging the obligations placed on him and the other Greens by the deal they struck with the NDP.

“In light of our existing accord, until confidence has been tested, it would not be appropriate for us to consider debate on government bills,” he said.

Having said that, he set the stage for another about-face when he praised the Liberals for some aspects of their bill, saying they would make “wonderful amendments” to some of the campaign-finance proposals from the NDP.

I’m guessing he’s concerned about the NDP creating loopholes for the staffing support and loans the party receives from organized labour. The hint being that after co-operating with the NDP to bring down the Liberals this week, he might in future try to work with the Liberals to curb the excesses of the NDP.

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